


Five Times Steve Rogers Broke The Rules of Time Travel (and One Time He Didn't)

by theladyingrey42



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Bisexual Steve Rogers, F/M, I ship Steggy and Stucky and this fic does too, M/M, Multi, Not A Fix-It, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Spoilers, Steve Rogers-centric, Time Travel, but a filling in the gaps, this will not make any sense if you haven't seen endgame
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 14:34:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18640060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyingrey42/pseuds/theladyingrey42
Summary: Look, it's not that Steve doesn't understand the rules of time travel.





	Five Times Steve Rogers Broke The Rules of Time Travel (and One Time He Didn't)

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea how I should be tagging any of this. I just have a lot of feelings to work through.
> 
> First chapter is pretty much just Steve / his sense of duty, with a side of Steve / Peggy.

"We're going to be okay, Tony," Pepper says, her hand clasped over the arc reactor. Its dying light shines through the gaps between her fingers. Her voice is level and calm. Too calm. "You can rest now."

Steve nearly bites through the inside of his lip.

_Rest_.

Is that what she wants to call it?

It's what Tony does, regardless. The light beneath Pepper's hand goes out. One of the brightest lights in the world goes with it, and it doesn't matter that Steve and Tony butted heads a thousand times. The world is poorer for the loss.

Tony picked up a weapon he had no right weilding. Otherworldly energy coursed through his body in a way he couldn't contain, couldn't hold. But he harnessed it. He channeled it. He used it to save _everyone_.

And now he gets to rest.

Maybe it's just that's Steve's hand is still tingling, where the imprint of Mjolnir's handle is burnt into his palm. Shivers of lightning still course through his veins.

Maybe he's tired and bleeding and bruised right down to his shattered ribs.

Maybe that's it.

But he thinks about that moment when Pepper let Tony go a lot.

About how Pepper and Morgan will be okay. About how the world will be okay, too, because they--it--can take care of itself.

About how a victorious, broken hero gets to _rest_.

#

He thinks about the stuff he used to say in the group he ran for survivors, doing Sam's work because Sam _didn't_ survive.

He told broken people to move on. He listened to their tears and told them to accept their feelings. He told them to keep living, because if they didn't, Thanos might as well have snapped them all.

They were spared for a reason.

But Steve? He didn't move on. He didn't cry, and you're damned right he didn't accept his feelings.

Not when his life was gone, when Peggy was dead and he'd missed his chance, and Bucky was ash and Sam was ash and Bucky was _ash_ , because Steve couldn't save them.

Until he did. Him and Tony and Thor and Nat, and then goddammit all, but Sam and Bucky and Strange and T'Challa and Shuri and Wanda and Groot and Hope and and and and...

Dammitall if they didn't save him right back.

#

Tony gets to rest.

Natasha--is that what she's doing now? She sacrificed her life to give the world a fighting chance. Tony did, too.

Steve's been there, done that. He's the one who came out alive this time.

He was spared. He survived.

So what is he going to do with it?

#

"There's one more mission," Bruce tells them.

Steve doesn't even have to think. He looks at the stones arrayed before them, all of life and death and time and space itself laid out, ripe for the picking. Endless alternate realities spinning out, timelines in danger of veering off track.

There's work left to do.

He's _tired_.

He rises to stand and says, "I'll go."

#

"You know I can come with you," Sam offers.

Bucky looks him in the eye. He's a different man now, but he can still see through Steve.

Sometimes, it's like he knows Steve better than Steve knows himself.

Bucky leans in for a hug, and Steve breathes him in. He holds him close, probably holds on for too long.

In another world... In another time...

"I'm gonna miss you," Bucky says.

Steve's going to miss him, too.

"Try not to do anything stupid while I'm gone."

"How can I?" Bucky's smile is softer than it was in 1942--even if the angles of his face have grown hard. "You're taking all the stupid with you."

#

He returns the stones in an order he pretends is random, but even he can admit it's not.

The most distant ones go first.

Quill doesn't notice him, too busy dancing, and Steve laughs and shakes his head, returning the power stone to its hiding place just in time for it to be found.

Transforming the reality stone back into the aether is a bit of work, but Thor's instructions were clear enough. Jane doesn't catch Steve infusing it back into her blood, still freaking out about a rabbit or something, he's not sure.

If he hears a man crying behind a pillar--if it sounds like Thor--

Well. Who would he even tell?

The soul stone is harder. Steve stands over an abyss, and he can't see Nat, but he'd swear to God he can _feel_ her, can hear her laughing--what he would give to hear her laughing at him again.

He closes his eyes and hurls the stone as far and high as he can. Flashing blue spreads across his darkened vision, and he _knows_. Fittingly enough, he can feel the stone's return in his very soul.

New York in 2012 is harder. He has to evade two versions of himself, and honestly forget about being _tired_. He's exhausted now.

But he makes it work. He fits the scepter right back into his past-past self's unconscious hand, and that's fine. That'll probably be okay.

Bruce made it sound like however it went, if the stone ended up in the right time and place...

It would be okay.

And then he's back. 1970. Twenty years after he died, and that's too many. It's too much. He puts the tesseract back, and his case is empty and he still has enough Pym particles left...

He hears heels clicking behind him. A voice he knows too well, raspier than it used to be. Harsher.

"Steve--"

He doesn't stop to think. He presses the button on his wrist...

#

It smells right. Goddammit all, it smells _right_.

He spent more than a decade in the future. He'd done okay. He adjusted. He tried.

But stepping into 1949 is like a weight lifting off his shoulders.

You never know how hard you're trying until you stop.

He picked the date at random, honestly, too impulsive to stop and think it through. The day after he crashed was tempting, but it was too soon. There would have been too many questions.

The Stork Club a week later? Who's to say she even would have showed?

But a few more years... Some time for everything to settle down...

It was selfish, he realizes soon after. He didn't want to face the consequences of his own death. He'd always known he'd have to change his identity, blend in, take on some kind of disguise, and if there was nobody still left mourning him...

Well.

It was selfish.

And it was really, really, really fucking stupid, too.

#

The thing is, Daniel Sousa is actually a pretty decent guy. Steve understands what Peggy sees in him.

There's no ring on that finger, though, and Steve's listened to enough Beyonce to know that that means something. Is Sousa dragging his heels or is Peg?

Does he want things from her she's not willing to give?

The reason Steve and Peggy worked--the reason they _would_ have worked, if they'd ever gotten the chance to--is that they respected each other. She was a career gal through and through, and he was fine with that. He loved that. She was stronger than he was, even with the serum, and he wouldn't have had it any other way.

If that's too much for Sousa, though... If he doesn't accept her exactly the way she is...

Steve has just enough doubt that he can't walk away. He could take the return trip back to Bruce and Bucky and Sam any time he wanted. But until he's sure...

He _can't_.

So he stays. He makes up an identity for himself. He cuts his hair short and grows out a mustache. He works construction, building houses for all those weary soldiers come home from the war and ready to settle down, and he goes past Peggy's house every night, and he hopes.

He _hopes_.

He won't ruin a good thing for Peggy--not if she really has one. If the grandchildren in the pictures on her nightstand at the nursing home were Sousa's, he's not going to whiff them out of existence.

He once told Bruce that he was the world's expert on waiting too long. Well, he's putting all that experience to good use.

He's waited a long time. He can wait a little bit more.

#

As it turns out, he only has to wait a couple of months.

#

He doesn't know exactly what happens. All he knows is that one day he walks past Peggy's place and she and Sousa are happily eating dinner, and the next day, Sousa's gone, and Peggy's got that _look_ on her face like she could take on an entire German battalion by herself, and that's it.

He's not waiting a second longer.

#

Okay, that wasn't true. It would be a real dick thing to do, though, wouldn't it? Swoop right in while she's still hurting?

He gives it a week, and he keeps a damn close eye on things. No other suitors are going to get the jump on him.

He waits and he watches and he waits, and his skin is flashing hot and cold with nerves. His heart pounds clear through his chest, and shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

#

The bracelet on his wrist is wearing a mark into his skin.

#

Look, it's not that Steve doesn't understand the rules of time travel.

Between what Bruce said and whatever Scott and Rhodey were rambling about, he's got a pretty decent idea of how things work.

He's not supposed to interact with himself in the past, though apparently it's already too late for that.

He's not supposed to change major events or sleep with his mom or pluck an infinity stone out of the time stream continuum.

But beyond that...it all kind of sort of doesn't really matter?

According to Bruce, there are paradoxes and things that can't be done and effects that can't take place.

He can't change his past to alter his present or his future. There may be branches and branches of reality, but whatever life he lives is what it is and what it has been, and it is what it always will be.

And that's...freeing.

#

Finally, one night, he screws up.

He's walking past Peggy's house, the collar of his coat turned up to hide his face. He keeps his gaze forward. He doesn't run; he walks. He does all the things Natasha taught him to do.

She always told him he was a terrible spy.

Peggy's windows are dark, so he keeps on walking, except then she's _there_. She steps out from behind a tree, eyes narrowed and her mouth a firm line.

She aims a pistol straight at his heart.

"I'm only going to ask this once," she says, matter of fact. "Who are you?"

And all this time--

Of course.

He wants to break out laughing right there on the sidewalk. He wants to sob with the absolute _relief_.

He went back seventy years in the past to find her. So of course Peggy would be the one to find him.

He's tired of the subterfuge. He's tired of waiting.

He's _tired_.

All the weariness and the relief make his voice tremble. He says just one word. He says her name. "Peg--"

It's almost imperceptible. Peggy's as hot-headed and impulsive as he is, but she's a damn sight better at hiding her emotions. The way she stiffens, though, everything in her going tense...

Recognition sparks in her eyes.

His throat spasms.

She gestures with her pistol. "Step into the light."

"Peggy," he says again, suddenly desperate. "It's me."

He steps forward, hands in front of his chest. She sucks in a breath. Her gaze is so perceptive as she darts it across his features. Still, her face goes pale.

"It can't be."

"It is," he swears. "I can explain everything. God, Peggy. There's so much I have to tell you. You won't believe." His eyes sting.

He takes another step forward, his hand reaching out of its own volition, because if he doesn't touch her this second, if he doesn't feel for himself that she's real and here and _now_ , he's going to explode.

All the weight of all these years. This lonely, aching hole inside his chest he's lived with since he woke up in a different century...

It's a ticking time bomb behind his ribs.

Doesn't he deserve to rest?

He takes another step.

It's one step too far.

In a flash, Peggy's expression leaps from disbelief to cold denial.

Then she clocks him with her pistol right across the side of his head.

#

In hindsight, he's basically just lucky she didn't shoot him.

#

He's taken harder hits. Hell, just the beating Thanos gave him makes a blow to the temple feel like a tickle.

Who's he kidding? It still fucking hurts.

"Christ, Peg." He grabs the gun from her and tosses it aside, then puts his hand to the lump that's already forming right above his cheek. "Nice to see you, too."

"You can't be. You aren't." Her voice rises higher and higher. "He's gone. I said goodbye."

"Yeah, yeah, you did. On the radio. Peggy, it was the worst few minutes of my life--"

She shakes her head wildly. Her eyes glisten. "On the bridge. After. I made my peace."

And, _oh_. Forget the hitting him with the gun thing.

This is blow right to the center of his chest.

Because, yeah. He did that, too.

In his own time. He took all that anger, all that loss. All the ways that waking up and finding out that everyone he knew and loved was gone... He had to take it and he had to wrap it up and push it under his skin, hide it away. He couldn't keep on walking in the world and live with it.

And if he didn't live...

Well. Then he had might as well be dead.

He said goodbye to Peggy in his own quiet way. He moved on.

Only he never really did.

Hope and terror bubble up in his heart, just like they did those nights he kept on walking past her house and didn't stop. He was a goddam coward then.

But he's not going to be one now.

"Peggy..." His voice cracks.

Something inside her seems to break, too.

And then she throws herself into his arms, and he catches her. He tugs her in as tightly as he dares, so tight he's this close to crushing her, but she doesn't seem to care. She clings on just as hard.

Every bit of hope and terror he feels is reflected back at him in her voice. "Steve?"

He closes his eyes. "Yeah. It's me."

#

Steve understands the rules of time travel.

And he's pretty sure the unspoken one... The assumed one...

It's that, eventually, you decide to go back.

#

They finally get their dance, later that night.

He tries to explain everything. She threatens to take him to SHIELD and get the scientists there to run tests to prove he's who he says he is, but he begs her no. God, no.

He tells her what he's been through. What he's lost. What he's gained.

He tells her he waited.

They cry as much as that guy did, at the group session, talking about his first date.

He asks her to keep his secret. To let him rest.

She wipes her eyes. She looks at him long and hard.

Then she pulls away.

She strides across her living room and pulls a record from her collection. Notes he knows too well erupt, full of static, from her Victrola. A longing so hard it hurts beats at the inside of his ribs.

She moves to stand before him, the bravest, most gorgeous, generous woman in the world. He holds out his arms, and she steps into them.

It's like coming home. Like he's right where he was always meant to be.

All the effort and the restraint and the _trying_ fall away.

They dance for what feels like hours. The needle on the phonograph picks up and moves back to the beginning, and the song starts again. He feels the warmth of her against his body, breathes in the scent of her perfume.

She tips up her chin.

She tastes exactly the same as he remembers. They only had time for that one rushed kiss, back before he got in that plane, with Phillips watching on.

But they have all the time in the world now. Nobody is watching. It's just them.

They have _time_.

#

And it's like Bucky always said.

Steve's never met rule he didn't have to try to break.

#

"We're going to be okay," Pepper promised, and that was the key, really, wasn't it? If Tony hadn't been assured of that, would he ever have been able to let go?

To rest?

If Steve hadn't seen the _army_ behind him. If Sam hadn't said, "On your left." If it hadn't been for the circles of light opening up all around him, heroes pouring out on every side...

A fight was sewn into Steve's soul the moment he was born. Even when he was five feet tall and a buck ten, soaking wet, he felt like he had to fight. The battle grew from a back alley brawl to an interdimensional annihilation, and every time, Steve put up his fists. He stood up.

Who was going to stick up for the little guy, if he didn't?

Well, he has his answer now.

"We're going to be okay," Pepper promised.

Steve looks back at the battlefield in his mind. He sees Thanos turning to dust.

He sees the warriors and wizards and soldiers all fighting beside him.

They've _got_ this. He knows it.

They--the world...

They're going to be okay.

#

"How long can you stay?" Peggy whispers, clutching him tight.

She's bracing to let go.

Holding her closer, he breathes in the scent of her again. He shuts his eyes.

With all the will inside him, for the first time in his life, he lets the fight seep out of his bones.

It's someone else's now.

"Forever," he promises. "Forever." 


End file.
